Brookline Public Library Monster-Building Program

📚Brookline Public Library (NH) recently wrapped up their monster-building program in collaboration with Cosmic Writers and the Tigris Foundation!

💫Read how this program impacted their students below:

“We had some wonderful testimonials [from the kids]! My favorite was from a fifth grade boy who has never really written a story before. I wasn’t sure if he was going to enjoy the program. But he did worked hard on each assignment. On the day of the presentation to the parents, his dad pulled me aside and said that Colin told him that morning that he decided he could be a writer when he grows up!

One of the girls wants to be a writer. She took the characterization part of the booklet — the internal and external traits, their likes and dislikes, age and physical description — very seriously.

She is writing a “novel” loosely based on the booklet. She took every character in her novel and wrote a description of them based on the outline established in the Monster Building Handbook. Her novel is about a little girl, whose father is remarrying because her mother passed away. They move from their NY apartment to a house in the country, where there happens to be a monster living in the attic.

One of the siblings — a little brother in second grade — saw how much fun his sister was having and asked to be a part of the program. He kept up with the others by dictating his story to me while I wrote it in his book. His story was one of the most creative! It was titled, “Unknown Creatures vs. Mortimer!”

🌟These stories make us believe even more deeply in the impact of supporting small and rural libraries in becoming local writing hubs and the power of creative writing! ✏️